PAT O'BRIEN

Pat O'Brien was born in 1899. The quintessential Irish actor, he was playing the second lead in The Front Page on Broadway, and someone at United Artists, which had just bought the rights, heard he was great in it, but they thought he had the lead role and they offered it to him, and of course he didn't correct them! He soon settled in at Warner Brothers, first playing romantic lead roles, but it wasn't long before he became a secondary star, often playing stereotyped Irish cops and priests. Perhaps his best remembered role was as Father Connelly in Angels With Dirty Faces, where he memorably asks gangster Rocky Sullivan to act "yellow" as he is strapped in the chair, so that kids everywhere wouldn't emulate him and end up where he did. He is also remembered for his roles in Some Like it Hot, and Page Miss Glory. He passed away in 1983 at the age of 83.